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45
WHOOPING-COUGH.
The deaths from Whooping-cough were 63, and 19 below
the corrected decennial average; thirteen of them were registered
in the Brompton sub-district; all but one were of children
under live years of age, including 30 under one year.
Fifty-two of the deaths were registered in the first twenty-four
weeks of the year, and only 11 in the remaining 28 weeks—
seven of them in the last eight weeks. Reference has been
made to the indifference of parents among the poorer classes,
in regard to the spread of measles in their families. The
observation is, perhaps, even more generally applicable in
regard to whooping-cough, the seriousness of this always distressing
malady being unappreciated by the poor, who, in the
engrossing struggle of life, pay scant attention to an ailment
which they deem inevitable and do not regard as dangerous.
Often enough, when the disease ends fatally, the event comes
as a surprise, being due commonly to some complication—of
the respiratory organs, or of the nervous system, few deaths
being registered from whooping-cough alone. These secondary
diseases cannot always be prevented; but the occurrence
of bronchitis or pneumonia, for instance, is not seldom due to
want of care in the management of the sufferers. The little
ones, it may be, are not confined to the house: they catch
cold; the "cold" and the "cough" are not differentiated;
medical treatment is not sought until the child is obviously very
ill, and, when it is obtained, the patient is but too frequently
beyond the reach of help.
The deaths in London from whooping-cough (2,477) were
524 below the corrected decennial average. The comparatively
low case-mortality of whooping-cough, and, I may add, of
measles also, serves in the public estimation to remove these
maladies somewhat out of the category of "dangerous infectious
diseases." It is the fact, nevertheless, that the deaths
from measles and whooping-cough far exceed the deaths from
small-pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, and "fever" combined.